IT WAS at once a felicitous pairing and a curious juxtaposition. The Field's atmospheric country music (tinted with jazz, blues and other ingredients) lilted and swayed easily amid the art exhibition surrounding them: Picturing The Great Divide - Visions From Australia's Blue Mountains.

The music's slow tempos, open expanses and sense of innocence seemed at one with the 100 depictions of the picturesque landscapes.

The curiosity was hearing such intimate, finely detailed sounds within this new citadel of art: the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre's gallery, with acoustics that lie somewhere between a cathedral and public baths. This is not a criticism. Such acoustics simply demand appropriate ensembles and intelligent musicianship.

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Sitting close to the band, I heard the guitars of Bruce Reid and John Stuart, Lloyd Swanton's bass and Pete Drummond's drums at first hand, so to speak. An occasional note from guitar or drums would flare up and slap back off the walls, seemingly magnified a hundredfold.

But the players stayed in control. The whole aesthetic of the Field is about glistening highlights leaping out of the music's delicate texture, anyway.

Reid, the leader and main composer, mostly played lap-steel guitar beside Stuart's electric, and they were like two different tones of the same colour, generating gently singing solos. Despite these decorative little features (including a bewitching Arco one from Swanton on Eastbound Train), the concept remains more about four people weaving the same muted carpet with minimal fussiness.

The other commonality was that, often, the music was slightly sad, like the sadness of a memory rather than something eating into one's here-and-now.

Such sounds amplified the splendour of the light in Eugene von Guerard's Govett's Leap And Grose River Valley behind them. Suddenly the fact Drummond, deputising for Hamish Stuart, made for an all-Blue Mountains version of the band was truly apt.